What retired Navy Chief Bob Hoyle remembers most about duty at Alvin Callender Field in Belle Chasse 50 years ago was the austerity, the isolation and the troubling political climate just outside the gates.

"They wouldn't even let us talk to people about it, it was so bad," Hoyle, 71, said, referring to the military base commanders. "There were no sidewalks, no grass. It was all mud. We had no way to get from the barracks to the hangar. We dropped planks across the ditch, and in that ditch there were a lot of water moccasins hatching."

Hailed as the first of its kind in the nation, the Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base, formerly Callender Field, has evolved into one of the region's largest employers, while positioning itself as a destination to train the country's aviators in aerial combat. It was dedicated 50 years ago this week.

U.S. NAVY PHOTO ARCHIVEThe Louisiana Air National Guard Hanger at the Naval Air Station, Alvin Callender Field, New Orleans, La. in this undated photo.

L.S. DeLAUNE / TIMES-PICAYUNE ARCHIVESThe Louisiana Air National Guard Hanger at the Naval Air Station, Alvin Callender Field, New Orleans, La. in this undated photo.

As good an installation as it has been in the past, I'm confident that its best years are ahead of it," said retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Mize, chairman of the Mayor's Military Advisory Committee of Greater New Orleans. Mize is widely credited with helping grow the base as commander of Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans nearly 10 years ago.

Lindy was here

What would eventually become the air station has humble beginnings. In 1915, George Hero bought and drained the swampy land in Plaquemines Parish. During the next decade, with the help of his son, George Hero Jr., he built a grassy runway that famed aviator Charles Lindbergh landed on during a national tour in 1929, said George Hero III of Belle Chasse.

During World War II, the Navy acquired 525 acres around that grassy airstrip and built three runways, known as Alvin Callender Field. It was an auxiliary field to the Navy's air station at New Orleans' lakefront, an installation built in 1941 to weed out prospective naval aviators.

That 188-acre lakefront air base, home to Navy and Marine Corps aviators, would later become hemmed in by the city's residential growth, said Hero, a retired Navy Reserve captain who was stationed there after enlisting in 1947.

"The Navy wanted to be out of there because the UNO site, everybody built around it," Hero said. "Jets didn't have enough runway. Belle Chasse was open land. So they decided that's where they wanted to go."

In 1954, the Navy began acquiring property from Plaquemines landowners, including the Hero family, which was paid $550 per acre for 2,200 acres.

Engineers carved out 3 feet of mud and muck and filled the site with river sand to provide a suitable subsurface on which to build, according to a base history.

When it was commissioned in December 1957, the air station comprised 3,252 acres and had two runways, three hangars, a control tower and two barracks. Among its tenants were the Navy, Marine Corps and the Air National Guard. The Coast Guard moved a helicopter there, laying the foundation for what today is the Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans.

About 1,800 service members in 19 squadrons were stationed there initially, according to newspaper reports.

Hoyle, then a 21-year-old aviation electrician's mate, was among the 368 enlisted sailors and an unknown number of Navy officers who were ordered to Belle Chasse from the lakefront.

Preparing for war

In Belle Chasse, snakes regularly slithered out onto the sun-baked runways in the afternoons in search of warmth. Hoyle, who now lives in Slidell, was among the sailors given guns to chase them off.

If a sailor had a car, it was easy to get off the base, to one of the bars along the highway, he said.

That is, if Leander Perez, the powerful local political boss, didn't harass the sailors who ventured out. Hoyle said he was never hassled, but others were, and base commanders took note.

"If you're going out on liberty, they didn't want you going out in uniform," he said, citing Perez as the reason.

Hero also transferred to Belle Chasse from the lakefront, and worked in anti-submarine operations. Air Force fighters were based there, ready to fend off Soviet bombers.

"All the station was doing was primarily preparing for World War III," Hero said.

Navy Reserve submarine-hunting airplanes were stationed there, flying surveillance operations over the Gulf of Mexico in search of Soviet submarines, he said.

"We found a couple," Hero said. "They were just cruising around, checking out what we were doing."

Plenty of activity

Today, almost 4,300 service members and civilians work at the 5,000-acre air station, half of whom are reservists reporting for duty one weekend each month. About $150 million in construction projects are planned.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., calls it "one of Louisiana's exemplary military installations," distinctive for being one of three of its type nationwide.

"It also has an economic stronghold in our Plaquemines Parish community," Landrieu said.

While the base has lost 1,500 mostly part-time positions in recent years, about 900 active-duty military and civilian jobs are slated to move to Belle Chasse with the partial closing of the Naval Support Activity in New Orleans.

Other groups, including the Navy Reserve's Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 77, will relocate there, said Capt. Jay Adelmann, the base's commanding officer. The Atlanta squadron's E-2 Hawkeye radar airplanes are used for counter-narcotics missions. Its 150 military and civilian jobs are scheduled to arrive by September.

To shore up its standing in recent years in light of Defense Department base closures, ground units have moved to the base as well. The headquarters and service company for the 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines and the Army Reserve's 377th Theater Sustainment Command, formerly housed at the lakefront, have moved to Belle Chasse. Both have been engaged overseas, with the Marines returning from Iraq this week.

'A great asset'

Many say the base proved its worth after the storm, when it became a hub for the region's recovery effort. Troops sent to the area flowed through the air station, along with supplies. Much of the military response was commanded from the air station, including National Guard aviation operations.

The response showed "our base can provide a key transportation and deployment hub in an important part of the country," Mize said.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he wants to ensure that the air station is able to grow.

"I want to do everything possible to help that base," Nungesser said. "We all know what they did for the city of New Orleans after Katrina. They're just a great asset to the community."

Flying into the future

The air station also is attracting nationwide interest. The Air Force announced in January that it is included in a study of possible homes for F-22 Raptors or F-35 Lightning II strike fighters, which are expected to enter service in 2017.

Mize said the base's assets, from good flying weather most of the year to its lack of civilian encroachment, make it "very competitive" for when the military decides where future generations of aircraft will be based.

In addition, the air station is trying to attract air squadrons from other installations for aerial combat training over the Gulf of Mexico.

Air station representatives touted training opportunities at a conference in California this year and got "a lot of great response," said Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Ready, the air station's assistant operations officer. The Coast Guard and the Air Guard are also conducting exercises from the air station.

"They're definitely utilizing what we have to offer here," Ready said.

"We have the chance to increase the already active role we play in hosting flying squadrons, who come to the air station for aviation training throughout the year," Mize said. "So I would say that our 50-year-old base is in very good shape and has a great chance to prove that older is better."

Paul Purpura can be reached at ppurpura@timespicayune.com or (504)¤826-3791.